Let’s start with the big bad news of the day. Creatures 4 is delayed until Q2 2012 (no date yet). I know, it sucks, but let me explain the reasons for this fairly huge delay and why it will be a good thing for the game.

And there’s some good news too…

Let me present the Hatchery. The first environment you’ll play in when launching the game for the first time and your central tool to bring the Norn eggs into the world. Hope you like it!

The Hatchery is pretty important in showing the kind of starting scenario your Creatures 4 experience will start with.

The real piece of good news is for the Android fans among you. We’re happy to announce that Creatures 4 will be released on your devices too! A lot of people requested it when we were at Gamescom and since the Android market is definitely growing, it ultimately made sense to Bigben and ourselves to get this going on.

So, let’s tackle the reasons for the delay and discuss where we are in regards to development right now.

There are two main reasons for the delay.

First, it simply took more time than we anticipated to reach our target quality and merge the Creatures engine into our own to bring the game to 3D. We’re very happy on how it’s going at the moment and we’ve finally reached a point where a freeform sandbox experience can run on its own without imploding into a black hole and suck in all of Belgium. What this means is that we’re finally adding our own layer of content to the game and it’s a very exciting time that feels like a new “aha” moment.

The second reason is that we want to release a game that is better than what we originally anticipated. Obviously our goal was always to deliver a great game, but our vision has evolved as the project took life. The first showings of the game and your feedback gave us new ideas which will ultimately allow us to improve our original design in several ways. The trade-off is that we need more time.

In regards to the development, we’re designing and integrating a brand new layer of content: that covers all those things that never existed in Creatures before and that will make Creatures 4 a good game by its own merits. We want to bring new interactions with the environment and bring a sense of palpable evolution to the Norns.

It’s clear to us that the focal point of the series is breeding generations of Norns which are increasingly more capable of handling themselves and their world. How can we encourage that, how can the world around the Norns react to their evolution, etc. These are the kind of things we’re dealing with right now. The ultimate goal here is to avoid the over-complexity of Creatures 3 while extending its gameplay.

And since it’s now the time to shoot for ideas, we have a couple of questions to which we think you guys will answer better than anyone. We’re genuinely interested in gathering a lot of great user experiences we know are important to a Creatures game player. So…

What is the coolest or the most advanced thing you’ve ever done, tried to achieve or wished you could do in one of the previous Creatures game?

It can be anything: breeding a über cool or super intelligent Norn, do something with the environment, messing up with the ecosystem, you name it. Though I’d like you to limit this to what the previous games offered as standard content and tools. This is not a “suggest the next feature” kind of thing but more of a “tell us why it’s cool for you”.

Inversely, what is the most boring/frustrating/disappointing experience you had?

“Overcomplexity of Creatures 3″?.. It’s was the simplest one of all the series. And when it was released, i remember people complaining that it was too simple and lacked more complex feature of Creatures 1 and 2 such as LifeKits.
Did you guys even played any of the games before 3rd one?..

But good to hear we’ve influenced your decisions about game design. I’m actually starting to carefully hope that this game may yet turn out to be something worth playing after all, even with those micro-transactions you can’t live without…

lauren

i am looking forward to this game very much infact but i’m not looking forward to the micro transactions but i understand the reasoning so thats all good.
what you’ll find a lot of people on here saying are things to do with the evolution of the norns. back in the days of creatures 2 there was a problem with regular norns eating the swamp food like carrots or potatos but a norn born there would happily eat it and i loved that connect to it.

Manfred Holzgreve

Hallo,

the most frustrating thing was that once the creator disappeared; therefore I deleted a very good world, without the creator I can’t do enough! Bye!

Iterum

I played all of the Creatures series religiously when I was younger, although my favourite happened to be the first. (I never had a chance to play the second until I was much older.) In Creatures 3 I remember myself trying to create a band of self-sufficient Norns/Grendels, which would live their daily routine and not focus their time entirely on procreating. I wanted to create two little ‘tribes’ per se, have them live in one location and know that was their territory so they would always return there to feel safe. My other ambitious project was to create supernorns which could thrive in harsh environments and perhaps survive in terrain which they wouldn’t normally be able to; I disliked having to download in order to create Mernorns, or Jungle Norns or whatever. It’s not a suggestion, but I felt like it should’ve already been present in the game.

But anyway, as I continued to play Creatures I knew that it wouldn’t be possible to create Norns who were ‘one of a kind’. Instead I used to spend hours trying to create naturally different coloured Norns who were incredibly intelligent and could effectively act as a leader for the rest of the Norns, I suppose it was sort of successful but the fact the Norns became a little incestuous was rather off-putting. I started hatching new Norn babies roundabout the same time as a Norn baby was born. Don’t get me wrong, it was fun at the time but after many hours and nothing there to surprise me as they reproduced, it became a little repetitive. I have high expectations for Creatures 4, even though I’m older now I want to play it and find it just as interesting as its predecessors (minus Creatures 3?).

Casey

So excited about this! I feel guilty this is the first I’ve heard of it. I was 8 when I played Creature’s 1 and it was the first game I stayed up for 12 hours straight playing without realizing it. I saved $20.00 in pennies to buy C2. I never liked C3 much and just went back to C2.

The coolest thing I achieved in C1 was that I created immortal norns. That system is long since dead I did it on but I had several norns with 100% life. I made a copy of one of my favorite norns and led him to the death cap mushroom out of morbid curiosity. I coaxed him into eating it and his life dropped to 99%! He ran babbling all the way back to the nursery area and refused to leave. His life did eventually pop back up to 100%.

I loved creatures 2 because I learned how to make COBS, download content, rewrite the game to do things like flood the volcano or turn it into another garden. It was massively satisfying to be able to design my own game how I wanted it. I loved fan created websites that talked about how things were changed or designed. I have a passion for genetics and biology due to these games and while I didn’t grow up to be a botanist I am a teacher and really wish I could have this game for my students to play.

ChosenPredator

I think the most clear negative besides the norn constantly using the elevator and becoming a pain to teach how to eat..is what one of the previous posters said it gets very repetitive fast if you have a way to keep it continuously changing with seasons/weather/habitat/environment thats a great step further also giving creatures unique personalities somehow or spreading out in packs or breeding with some kind of new species..

I think you have to check out some games with slight similarities and see how they dealt with repetitive nature of things – something that makes you not want to leave the game and come back again to see whats happening that is different from before…evolving the world would be interesting just like no same person has the same experience in black & white…I just hope the developers do things that shock them, like i’ve been saying – this is their Fatality move game it’s going to be huge

Rory_the_amusing

the depth or “Overcomplexity” of creatures 3 was what made it and its predesessors great, the user generated content was what made it magnificent and endureing.

ChosenPredator

http://www.twitch.tv/amaikokonut this is an interesting test they naturally let the creature evolve but it also gives an example of much of the problems (like one creature just continuously ramming the wall and the other creature just standing in one spot freaking that one specific creature out)…it’s an interesting experiment but you can see where the majority of the flaws are.

B

Oh wow C4! Awesome!!! Like other posters have said, I started in with C1 when I was young. I remember staying home sick one day and rearranging the whole living room so I could play Creatures all day while laying on the couch.I never played C2, just went on to C3 which I like, but don’t love quite as much as 1, which was as complex or easy as you wanted it to be. C3 just has too much going on, most of which gets in the way. Also, file structure. I have NO idea where C3 stores my creature files on my Mac.

I’ve always bred my Norns in alphabetical generations, breeding the weirdest ones, or ones with the most point mutations or whatever criteria. I made it to Gen H once, before some fatal error deleted the world. One day, I’ll make it to Z, that’s my goal.

Thing I miss most about C1: Gestation time. Its was longer in C1. You would go check the pregnancy indicator and the numbers would crawl by and the whole time you’d be fussing over the Norn, hoping it didn’t eat a mushroom and die before the numbers got to eight. It was the most exciting part of the game. In C3, they just pop them out in under 2 minutes. Boring I say!

Thing that I love about C3: The biochemistry kit.

Thing I hate about C3: They eat all the carrots.

http://discoveralbia.blogspot.com Jessica

Suspense, suspense! Hopefully there will be a new update about Creatures 4 soon. I understand that the news and information has to be kept limited… Doesn’t stop me from checking back all the time, though! Ha ha!

The last comment about the gestation period is quite true. In Creatures 1, I really enjoyed the long pregnancies and having to take care of the Norns. Granted, “long” really isn’t the correct term, for I think it takes around 10 real-time minutes. In Creatures 2 and 3, the pregnancies seemed to last only a few breaths. This helped in moving forward with the generations more quickly, but it really took away from the connected feeling I had with my C1 Norns. Even now, I still prefer Creatures 1 because it feels less like a science experiment, and more like a living world where the hand’s presence matters. Third-party additions have really improved upon C2 and C3/DS, though, and I still enjoy playing them. There’s just something about the original Creatures that seems to make players feel much more connected to the world. Hopefully Creatures 4 will have some of these elements, and more!

Good luck with the continued development!

http://www.fishingcactus.com Andrea Di Stefano

Thank you for your patience! We’re working really hard to be able to show you the game when we’re confident enough with its quality. Bear with us a little more please

If I had to pick one, C1 would be my favorite too. It was much more…mmm…intimate and peaceful. That said, I love the critters!

Susan Matthews

onoooooo i have played all thr creatures games introduced them to fam and they played them then our kids were playing them an now grandkids…….just now found out about 4 but am very disapointed..really excited for a min. now i learn on its on line only….big booboo we dont have unlimited net …not all people can play on line esp a game we would leave running all day and half the night…..very disapointed.. a 60 year old fan and her fam

http://lab.s4t4n.net Omnikron13

I’m quite excited to see the creatures series -finally- getting the fourth (or more than 4th if you count things like DS…) game in the series. =)
I’m a long time fan of the series, and I really hope this game manages to be as good (or better?) than the ideas everyone has been kicking about for years. It must take some courage to take on a game that has been so highly anticipated by the fans of the series! I salute you guys and wish you some serious luck satisfying the baying crowd.

As for the best/most important features of the previous games… It has to be the sheer power available for making content, that is undoubtedly what kept the community around for so, so long. I’m sure you guys are aware just how much of C3/DS was implemented in the in-game scripting language, and so consequently how much flexibility modders had to do truly amazing things with the engine. I personally enjoyed tinkering around with the scripting almost to the point of ignoring the norns, so I really hope you’re doing everything possible to facilitate modding in this game.

As for the worst/my least favourite parts, I have to say there were admittedly quite a lot of things that could have been better, though for me mostly on the technical side… One thing that springs to mind is how rigid the system for classifying objects was, for example; fruit was fruit – you couldn’t have norns who had a taste for bananas, or hated the taste of apples, because they simply weren’t capable of telling the difference in any way. Things like that really limited the fun you could have making new plants, animals etc.

Anyway, looking forward to seeing more of what you’ve done with this game. =)

Posiperson

Hmm, one big thing you could add is something that had been attempted with third-party addions but was never fully realized;
Can you somehow encourage the Creatures to “care” for baby-stage offspring? By that I mean could you add some incentive for infants to not go adventuring on their own (like, say, they prefer being in crowds) and or could their adult mother feed them? People in the past have made Norns whom would, after laying an egg, basically release an invisible “food aura” around them so that the infant would remain full and content, thus teaching the baby that it was better to stay near mommy then to go find a Grendel to play with. It was on a timer, so by the time the offspring became a child, the “food aura” had ceased to exist, thus encouraging the offspring to go look for food now that it was old enough to survive more easily on it’s own.
This also had the added bonus of preventing over population, as it distracted the mother from getting pregnant again and therefore creating a natural spacer between siblings and generations.
Perhaps it might be too hard to input such a thing on all the Norns at this point in development, but perhaps it would be a breed that when crossed could pass on this trait to it’s hybrid offspring?
My main interest in this idea comes from understanding that Norn Brains will always be limited in their natural ability to think, so it’s often easier for them if there are environmental triggers and biochemical triggers to encourage them towards doing or not doing something. It also allows for an early chance for an individual Norn to showcase it’s personalty and uniqueness form others; Does it stay near mother, venture fourth regardless or realize that it could in theory go off on it’s own but can run back to mum when it’s hungry?
I really liked in the previous games how different Norns developed different survival strategies and in this game you are currently working on, I hope to see opportunities made available for the creatures to survive in many various ways.

ChosenPredator

@Pospiperson you don’t know how bad I hope that happens creature to separate themselves and start their own colony in another part of the world, with just a completely different evolution and understanding of the world then perhaps norns that stay behind in the home area – other norns discovering different species in the world and learning from their cultures it could be mind blowingly awesome to see what they could learn from another species perhaps even teach it english in exchange learning something from the other culture..

Pretzelcoatl

Quite a few years after Docking Station’s release, a fan of the games (at this site http://creatures.virtualheaven.nl/ ) created a replacement for the genome files in the game that allowed the creatures to develop opinions of each other and the Hand depending on their treatment, as well as allowed same sex creatures to interact on an intimate level. It actually made Creatures 3 one of my favorite iterations, because now it really felt like my Norns cared about each other and me! Nornish bullies were told that they were hated and cuddly ones were hailed by their companions. They stayed in tight-knit kin groups and traveled together. I actually recall getting tears in my eyes when one of my Norns proclaimed “Luke love Pretzel”, hehehe. I was always one of the more emotionally attached players (I recall playing it when I was seven years old and becoming emotionally disturbed when one of my first Norns was beaten to death), so interaction between Norns and the Hand was one of my favorite things to experience. Making them happy and finding their personalities was the most satisfying part of the game to me and I enjoyed gardening and filling the world with toys and gadgets to make their lives easier.

The more frustrating part of the game for me is being unable to adequately teach my Norns survival strategies. I know that’s part of the challenge of the game and having Norns become “programmed” by whatever they hear takes the life out of them, but… Creatures 2 was the hardest game for me because I could NEVER get them to listen or breed, even with the Canny Norns. It was pretty stressful, and many of them died of starvation when I was shoving food in their face and telling them “eat food eat food” over and over again. I guess stronger instincts would be the solution? I wouldn’t really know, haha.

I’m really looking forward to this game! Even if it isn’t what I expected, I’m so happy to see Creatures alive and well. I love you Fishing Cactus! Thank you for caring about our favorite little game! <3

Pretzelcoatl

Oh, and on another note: I understand that microtransactions are what allows you to support yourselves, but can you please ensure that the advertisements for Golden Eggs are not too invasive? It really takes me out of the game if I keep getting told to buy Golden Eggs to have such-and-such item.

http://www.prophetsix.com Travis

a few minor questions… will any of the breeds have tails? how big are each of the terrains? is the hatchery really one of the 5 terrains? Will there be night and day efffects? will there still be weather effects like in the previous entries? since grendels wont be in the start of the game will there still be some sort of threat? how advances is the ecology? Will we still have a wide array of critters and plantlife? Thank you!

John Kephart

Woah, woah, woah. I perfectly understood Creatures 1, 2, and 3 when I was 7, Creatures 3 confused me because there was a lack in complexity, and it hugely disappointed me because it wasn’t as fun. If you not persueing a Creatures one or two look a like, I’m going to gaurentee you’ll lose a lot of followers. Please, if you want to make a proper creatures 4, give it the “complex” stuff creatures 1 and 2 had.

Kim

Every now and then I find a way to get C1 to work on my computer although I can never remember how I do it. So suffice to say I will be buying several copies of the pack releasing all previous creatures games along with C4 (I hope this is still happening). One copy I will eat so it can stay safe inside my belly, one will live in a big metal box with a big metal lock, and one will be for gaming pleasures

Anyway! This game series pretty much taught me how to use a computer thats how young I was when I started. It would be great to hear some of the old SFX and music clips from c1 in the new c4 game (or at least re-mastered versions of them). There was always something comforting about the clock ticking near the incubator, just below the gentle bees buzzing, with an interlude of a cute little midi track every 2 minutes or so in the background. It was also always great to see norns smiling when their needs were satisfied. Seeing each norn grow and vary differently according to life experiences etc was good and i think the new c4 should build on this. I did use to get a bit annoyed at how difficult it would be to separate 2 or more norns when they met and get them to eat or sleep. Downloading heaps of new cobs, patches norns etc was always great across all the creatures games.

C3 and Docking Station: Love all the biomes, love creating different coloured fish and planting the seaweed eggs blablabla. Hated how it would all die and the whole ship would go sterile if you didnt focus on the terraniums and just took care of your norns. Without the biopellets cob this was a real problem. Also got annoying in c3 before DS (where you can lock the doors) where ettins would steal everything and pile every gadget in the desert. I wanted to raise ettins but it was useless because they were never happy at all and were only ever ‘homesick’ unless they were walking to and from the desert with a gadget. I loved splicing norns and seeing what pretty cross breeds I could come up with eg bruin head, civet legs, bengal body… Was annoying having to keep topping up the ship with biopellets.

I dont know what you mean by c3 being complex….

Sorry for going a little off track from the original question but I am pretty excited about this! Squee!

Kim

BTW, im not really liking the new norn look, but i’m sure its something we will be able to warm up to

http://watercrown.info Ryusui

You and me both. On the “not liking” front, anyway. These new Norns are really ugly. Where are their tails? Why do they look like babies in pajamas? And why are their facial proportions smack dab in the uncanny valley?

I LOVED the applets; they were so useful. Hated hated HATED the pickups. It would be SO much easier to just have everything activated already.

http://www.dancatt.com DanCatt

Have you any updates for us yet? – have been checking with anticipation every day to see if anything new has been posted. Cant wait to see what stuff you have got to show us. I can wait to play the game, but I would rather you guys not rush – and spend longer if needed to make the game perfect .. ..

We Want The Norns! We Want The Norns! Release it! Thank you soooo much for all your hard work and development into the new chapter of the series. NOW GIVE US THE NORNS! >:3

Kuroe

The coolest thing I did was have many generations of Norns, developing new characteristics (colors and behaviors). The most boring/disappointing… Not being able to keep Norns in a zone, for example by putting objects that block them. This would be useful to have a better control on populations, mating, etc…
I always wished physic characteristics could impact on interaction with the environment. For example, long hair (like you seem to control in your game) make the Norn feel less cold but be more warmed on a warm place. If the tall of the members could evolve, they could reach far objects, etc… This would allow a deepest evolution simulation…
Sorry for my bad English >> and thanks to work on this project!

Linda

I was six years old when I saw Creatures for the first time. I fell in love immediately.
I have always loved Creatures 1 and 2, Creatures 3 on the other hand, not so much. It lacked a lot of things. The ship felt small somehow, I missed the life kits, the ecosystem didn’t felt like an ecosystem and I adored how I in the earlier games could click up a lot of windows and watch all those complex things happening inside my Norns. If it had lungs, a heart, expecting an egg and so on and so on. It might sound strange, but I even loved how radiation effected my Creatures, just to now that it was dangerous and that they needed to stay away from it.
I would probably be the happiest person on the planet if this game were more like those games.

I liked how the weather changed. I liked all the small little details in the enviroment, so much to look at. I loved the cobs, and the different breeds with their distinctive looks. In the third game I really liked the generation tree, so simple to look up who the parents and siblings were. And that this information stayed even if I exported a Creature.
I also liked that the game took a picture by itself when a baby was born, so that I would know how it looked even though I wasn’t present at the time. The problem here was when there were a lot of other Norns/Ettins/Grendels in the way and made it impossible to see the new born.

And I want the Norns to have a tail. In Creatures 3 they only had one type of tail and I really didn’t like that.
I would like the Norns to look more like those in Creatures 1 and 2.
I would adore a Kai Norn, how the parents will take care of the baby, perhaps try to protect it from harm.

I didn’t like the applet-things that you had to pick up. I always downloaded a cob who did the work for me. I hated how dumb the Norns could be. In the first games they usually didn’t care what you told them to do, in Creatures 3 and DS they were so simple minded that they almost didn’t think for themselves. Even if they weren’t hungry, they would eat if you told them to. I felt that they had more of a personality in the second game. Expressions is also a VERY important thing, that they almost took away in the third game.

I hated how the little animal would bump into the walls or be absolutely impossible to get in an elevator. I didn’t like that they couldn’t swim, and also how they know that they are drowning, but don’t do anything about it.

Michelle

My favorite things:

C1: The look of the norns. This was the first game I played and I just loved the norns from this series, especially the Purple Mountain ones. I enjoyed the way breeding was handled here as well, though slightly less reluctance is preferable since I always had to have 3rd party add-ons to make sure they didn’t go extinct. I loved the way the hatchery worked as well. This is the most personal of the games I think.

C2: Overall my favorite version of all the games. Here the kits really took off and become fascinating just to browse through randomly and watch. I love being able to look over all the internal workings, especially with the science kit. Having these parts separate added a ton to the gameplay. Utterly my favorite part of the game by far. I also adore the world in this series. The continuity, the beauty, and most of all the diversity! Volcano, ocean, lush jungle, all in one package! Also, it may sound silly, but the snoring. It’s adorable.

C3: The complexity of the world. By far this is my favorite part of this version. I love messing around with the environment, downloading new critters and plants, that kind of thing. I also really enjoy messing with the genetics because they are the most complex and thus provide the most possibilities for change.

Overall: One of my favorite parts of all the games was genetics. Whether it was using a genetics editor to play with them directly or just running a lot of mutation heavy 3rd party breeds, I loved experimenting and being able to mod the genes. Second favorite part is environment and all the interaction that provides. Expanded vocabulary is also really good.

My dislikes:

C1: Not being able to carry around the norns was my biggest pet peeve here. Also the lack of breeding. It always took ages to get any eggs. Lack of scroll function too was very annoying. I like being able to go wherever I want in the world without dragging a norn along.

C2: Not a lot of dislikes here really. Nothing that stands out in memory at least.

C3: Lack of kits was hard to get used to. The artwork I have gotten used to, but I prefer more the C1/C2 norns. I do like the patterns of the bengals though.

Overall: For all 3 games the most boring part is teaching the norns to talk. I don’t play DS much which is why I left it off, but one thing I LOVE there is the teacher. In these 3 games I always use a cheat because it takes an age and it’s very difficult especially early on.

Westa

Being able to code and develop our own extensions was always something that made the game feel like it was our own.
It was so cool the first time you dropped a new toy or device into the game that you had created yourself.
Given the move to 3d – im assuming this is something that will not be as easy ??? or possible in C4.
Have you given any thought to extension options for this version.
Either way – very excited at the prospect of C4 on all my devices.

Westa

creaturegirl

i like the idea in c3 where the weather would randomly change. the naturally occurring environment is cool and there should be more areas with varying climates ie. beach, desert, snow, grasslands, wetlands, garden, sky. and more cool items ie. foods, toys, gadgets, love potions, nests. stuff like that wud be uber cool

Aimi

Its been a while since your last update, and people are wondering how the game is going. I know you’re busy, but would you mind at least giving a small update? I’m sure many people would appreciate it, even if its just to tell us that you are still working on it. ^^

KitLlwynog

My favorite part was using the genetics kids to breed one of a kind Norns, or splicing them with other species to make norms that are more resistant to disease. Sometimes I just liked to let them go and see what happened.

I hated constantly running out of bioenergy. Very irritating. Even with all the pickups it’s a constant fight to keep the ecosystem functioning.

http://www.quiltingcurve.blogspot.ca/ Veolfa

My favorite part of all the Creatures games was cheating. Sometimes I like to play vanilla but mostly I cheat. When I play I breed, breed, breed my norns to different ends all the time. I love matching norns to environments that they thrive in, and moving them to see if they can adapt. Watching norns evolve is amazing. Using the Genetics Kit, and genuinely learning about science was my favorite part. I hope there is something in C4 that will spark my interest because I’m still learning things playing C3 and C1. I would say the most anoying thing about playing previous Creatures games was/is the random crashing.

Kazarr

Favorite thing?
Breeding and splicing ever more unique and advanced strains of creatures, and then performing social experiments with them for a while. Their complexity allowed for experiments that no other games could support. In the end though, I’d always revert to simply taking care of my creations. They’re adorable, after all.

My least favorite thing was Creatures Village. I gave it to my little sister who had a lot of fun with it, but the decreased complexity and options left nothing enjoyable for a real fan of the series.